As a prelude to Polska! Year starting next week, a Polish Cultural Festival opens in Edinburgh. 

Click on the audio icon to listen to a report by Michał Kubicki.

The Festival is the brainchild of the Scottish artist and modern art impresario Richard Demarco, who last year received the honorary citizenship of Lodz. The city’s artists figure prominently in the programme of the event. According to Richard Demarco, the city of Lodz – with its film-making tradition, the Museums of Modern Art and of Textile Design as well as its history of multi-culturalism – has much to offer to the outside world.

The programme of the week-long festival includes a presentation of films by students of the Lodz Film School and concerts by Aleksander Kudajczyk, a graduate of the Lodz Music Academy whose pianistic skills were discovered two years ago in Glasgow, where he worked as a cleaner, as well as art exhibitions and lectures on Polish culture and the arts.